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W.S. Graham
William Sydney Graham (19 November 1918 - 9 January 1986) was a Scottish poet. Graham's poetry was mostly overlooked in his lifetime but, partly due to the support of Harold Pinter, his work has enjoyed a revival in recent years. Life Youth Graham was born in Greenock, Renfrewshire. In 1932, he left school to become an apprentice draughtsman and then studied structural engineering at Stow College, Glasgow. He was awarded a bursary to study literature for a year at Newbattle Abbey College in 1938. He spent the war years working at a number of jobs in Scotland and Ireland before moving to Cornwall in 1944. Early work The 1940s were prolific years for Graham, His first book, Cage Without Grievance was published in 1942, and he published four more books during that decade: The Seven Journeys (1944)' 2ND Poems (1945), The Voyages of Alfred Wallis (1948) and The White Threshold (1949). The style of these early poems led critics to see Graham as part of the neo-romantic group that included Dylan Thomas and George Barker. The affinities between these three poets derive from a common interest in poets like Gerard Manley Hopkins, Arthur Rimbaud and Hart Crane, and, in the cases of Thomas and Graham, a taste for the Bohemian lifestyle of the London literary scene. In 1948, after spending a year on a reading touring of the United States , which included a small amount of teaching at New York University, he moved to London to be nearer the hub of that Bohemian world. Here he came into contact with T. S. Eliot, then editor of Faber and Faber who published The White Threshold and who were to remain Graham's publishers for the rest of his life. ''The Nightfishing'' and after In 1954, Graham returned to Cornwall to live near the St. Ives artists' colony. Here he became friendly with several of the resident painters, including Bryan Wynter and Roger Hilton. The following year, Faber & Faber published The Nightfishing, a book whose title poem marked a dramatic change in Graham's poetry and a move away from the neo-romantic tag. Unfortunately for the poet, the poem's appearance coincided with the rise of The Movement with their open hostility to the neo-romantics, and, despite the support of Eliot and Hugh MacDiarmid, the book was neither a critical nor a popular success. It was to be 15 years before Graham published another book, Malcolm Mooney's Land (1970). This, and his last book, Implements In Their Places,''are truly original and enduring poetic achievements, for which Graham is only slowly coming to be recognised. For many years, he had been living in semi-poverty on his income as a writer, but in 1974 he received a Civil List pension of £500 per year. Perhaps because of this alleviation of his financial circumstances, Graham began to publish with more frequency, with ''Implements in their Places (1977), Collected Poems 1942-1977 (1979) and an American-published Selected Poems (1980). Marriage and death He married another poet, Agnes Kilpatrick Dunsmuir (1909–1999), known as "Nessie Dunsmuir". New Collected Poems, page 375. She is addressed by name in stanza 6 of "To my wife at midnight", pp. 262-265 He died in Madron, Cornwall, in 1986. Recognition Graham's reputation has grown in recent years. Some might argue this is partly due to Harold Pinter's often-expressed enthusiasm for the poet, or attribute his increasing recognition to the widespread advocacy of poets associated with the British Poetry Revival. Graham's work was represented in the anthology Conductors of Chaos (1996) by a selection introduced by the poet and critic Tony Lopez, who also wrote a book-length study, The Poetry of W.S. Graham (1989). Graham also was represented in the second edition of the Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse (1962) and the Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2001). In 2006, 20 years after Graham's death, memorial plaques were unveiled in Fore Street, Madron, where he spent his final years, and at his birthplace, 1 Hope St Greenock. Publications Poetry * Cage without Grievance. Glasgow: Parton Press, 1942. * Seven Journeys. Glasgow: William McLellan, 1944. * 2nd Poems. London: Nicholson & Watson, 1945. * The Voyages of Alfred Wallis (pamphlet), 1948.W.S. Graham 1918-1986, Poetry Foundaiton, Web, June 22, 2012. * The White Threshold. London: Faber, 1949. * The Nightfishing. London: Faber, 1955. * Malcolm Mooney's Land. London: Faber, 1970. *''Penguin Modern Poets 17'' (David Gascoyne, W.S. Graham, Kathleen Raine). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1970.Search results = au:David Gascoyne, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc., Web, Jan. 16, 2004. * Implements in Their Places. London: Faber, 1977. * Collected Poems, 1942-1977. London: Faber, 1979. * Uncollected Poems. Warwick, UK: Greville Press, 1990. * Letters and Heads (illustrated by Douglas Thomson). Llandogo, UK: Old Stile Press, 1993. * Aimed at Nobody: Poems from notebooks (edited by Margaret Blackwood & Skelton). London: Faber & Faber, 1993. * W.S. Graham: Selected poems. London: Faber, 1996. * W.S. Graham: Selections (selected by Nessie Dunsmuir). Warwick, UK: Greville Press, 1998. * New Collected Poems (edited by Matthew Francis; foreword by Douglas Dunn). London: Faber, 2004. Letters * The Nightfisherman: Selected letters of W.S. Graham (edited by Michael Snow and Margaret Snow). Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 1999. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Scottish Poetry Library.W.S. Graham (1918-1986), Scottish Poetry Library. Web, Jan. 18, 2014. See also *Scottish poetry *List of British poets References External links ;Poems * "The Alligator Girls" *W.S. Graham (1918-1986) at the Scottish Poetry Library. *W.S. Graham 1918-1986 at the Poetry Foundation. ;Audio / video *W.S. Graham (1918-1986) at The Poetry Archive . *W.S. Graham at YouTube *W.S. Graham: The Beast in the Space: Graham reads from a selection of his poetry, at the Warwick Archive ;About *Harold Pinter on Graham *"What is the Language Using us for?", review of New Collected Poems. *[http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=11686 Review of The Nightfisherman: Selected Letters], by Dennis O'Driscoll in Thumbscrew No. 16 (2000), "On Pancakes Alone" ;Etc. *W.S. Graham fonds at University of Victoria, Special Collections Category:1918 births Category:1986 deaths Category:Alumni of Stow College Category:Scottish poets Category:Modernist poetry in English Category:People from Greenock Category:20th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets